Twilight Can't Grammar

by Starshine Dart

The Journey Begins...

“I have to get ready….” Twilight hurriedly runs back and forth between her room and the balcony of her oaken house, bringing along several items with her that she would have on her balcony tonight. Books, sextants…. It seems that tonight, she would be stargazing again. “If my predictions are correct, then the next meteor shower should be starting soon,” she states to herself.

She runs back into her room to retrieve the last of her needed items: her scientific journal, lying conveniently at her bedside table. She quickly picks it up in her magical aura, bringing it to the balcony with her. “That should be everything. Now, it should start at any moment….”

Looking towards the stars, she intently observes the sky for any sign of them, to no avail. Disappointed, she sits on the balcony floor. “Well, looks like I’ll have to wait, but that should be fine. It shouldn’t take too long for it to start….” Suddenly, the purple mare was hit with an idea to pass the time. “I know! I’ll write a report on meteor showers! That should be fun!”

Twilight looks around before finding the necessary supplies. She grabs hold of an inkwell, quill, lantern, and a sheet of parchment which she lays in front of her. With a smile on her face, she dips the red-feathered quill into some fresh ink, ready to write. With determination glowing in her eyes, putting quill to parchment, she begins her task.

“Meteor showers are events in which a number of meteors are observed to come from one point in the sky,” she begins, reading the words aloud as she writes. “This is caused by meteoroids entering our atmosphere at high speeds and parallel trajectories.” Twilight turns her gaze towards the sky once more. Nothing yet.

“Most of these meteoroids are smaller than a grain of sand, therefore almost all of them will disintegrate and not hit the planet’s surface. Intense meteor showers are known as meteor storms, or outbursts, and can produce more than one thousand meteors an hour.”

Twilight returns her gaze from the night sky to her latest piece of work, to read it over. However, once her gaze meets her own writing, her pupils instantly shrink, and her jaw drops. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Her right eye begins twitching as she reads over her own writing. She looks terrified, as if the words had been written in blood. Yet to her, it is even worse than that. She gives it one final read.

‘meteor showrs is events in wich number meteors ovserved from sky. thsi cause by meteriods entring atmosfere at high speed and prallel tarjectries. most meteriods small grian of sand, almsot all disntrgrate and no hit plnaet surfce intesne meteor showrs known as mteor stroms or outburts, and mkae 1000 meteors in hour.’

“Oh dear Celestia, get it away from me!” Frantically, Twilight scrambles backwards and cowers in fear from the atrocious piece of writing. “How is this possible? I’ve never written something this badly before! This has to be a dream … this has to be a dream….”

After many attempts to wake herself up, she comes to the terrifying conclusion that her report is no dream. Slowly getting up on shaky hooves, she walks over to the edge of the balcony and sits down.

“It’s real … how could this happen? How can I write so badly?” She turns her gaze towards the offending piece of parchment. “That … thing is pure poison. An abomination to ponykind! It shall never see the light of day!” Energetically, she rises up from her sitting position, and stares down the horrendous piece of writing with a piercing gaze. “Stand back, foul demon! I have fire!”

Twilight’s threat towards her opponent doesn’t seem to stop it, as coincidentally, a breeze of wind shuffles the parchment ever so slightly closer to her.

“I warned you, vile beast!” Lighting up her horn, she casts a bolt of lightning, straight at her foe. The swift bolt strikes the parchment, causing it to catch fire, and quickly be reduced to ash.

“Aha! I am victorious! It’s back to Tartarus with you, demon!” Twilight cries out in victory. She triumphantly pumps a hoof in the air, which is accompanied by a voice coming from inside her house.

“Twilight? What the heck are you doing up there?” It’s Spike. She freezes in mid-cheer. Well, this is awkward.

“Nothing!” she innocently replies. After a small deadpan from Spike, Twilight sighs and looks worriedly towards the pile of ashes that used to be the start of a report. “What could be making me write like this…?” she wonders aloud.

Just then, a glowing speck comes down from the sky. Then another, and another. The meteor shower. But Twilight doesn’t care. She has more important things to worry about.

---

Twilight doesn’t bother trying to sleep with this issue on her hooves. She is determined to see this problem through, for fear that she may never write something intelligible again.

“There’s no time for sleep. I have to solve this, or my next report definitely won’t look pretty. Now, first step. Does this happen all of the time? Maybe I could try writing something again.”

In an attempt to repeat the tragedy which occurred several minutes ago, she fetches a spare piece of parchment, an inkwell, and a quill.

“Hi, my name is Twilight Sparkle. I live in Ponyville, and I am Princess Celestia’s student,” She reads aloud as she writes. Unfortunately, as much as she wills herself, the end result is this:

‘hi, nmae is twilght sprkl. i live in ponyvlle, adn i prinses celestia studnt.’

Jumping back in fright at the failed attempt, she casts a bolt of lightning at the abomination, causing it to meet the same fate as the first. She shudders in disgust.

“Okay, that is definitely not a fluke. Now, what could be causing this? A physical problem, perhaps?” she asks aloud.

Taking hold of a portable mirror with her magenta aura, she meticulously inspects her horn. Occasionally, she moves the mirror around her horn to get a glimpse of it from all angles, while confirming that she hasn’t found anything abnormal: cracks, chipping, and the like.

“If it’s not my horn that’s the problem, then what else could it be?” she thought aloud. Putting her brain into gear, Twilight enters a deep pensive state. She tosses around various possible causes of her barbaric writing, but never seems to accurately pinpoint one.

“Could it be some sort of unicorn sickness? No – that’s impossible, I’m feeling fine right now, and I don’t think I’ve noticed symptoms of any sort. Maybe I’ve run into that awful poison joke again? No, that’s not it either. That plant’s native only to the Everfree Forest, and I haven’t been in there for a good month now.” The scenario continues for several minutes, with no results coming up. Have I been around hazardous magical objects? No. Could it be an enchantment? No. Could it be some sort of prank?

As much as she figures Rainbow Dash would try to pull a prank like this, it would be impossible for her to do so. Firstly, Rainbow Dash is a pegasus, not a unicorn. Secondly, the only way earth ponies or pegasi can use magic in the first place would be to perform rituals from tomes that were now thousands of years old. To top it all off, those tomes are now forbidden due to all of them working with very volatile magic.

While ruling out all of the above, Twilight finally settles upon a semi-plausible hypothesis.

“Maybe something’s wrong with my own magic? Issues like that are very rare, but … I suppose there’s no harm in checking. After all, I have no other leads….”

Having no choice but to investigate, she lights up her horn to provide herself a light source as she trots from her spacious oaken library to the dark depths of her basement.

She slowly walks down as she shines light upon the steps, being careful not to fall. However, as she continues onwards, the strangest thing happens. She notices that the light from her horn is beginning to fade and flicker. The observation makes her more confident that she is drawing closer to finding out exactly what has been causing her magic to act so strangely.

Her light source flickers rapidly as the disorientating darkness comes and goes several times, proving itself to be unreliable. It would be difficult to find anything down there without any sort of light, so she goes on with what she has.

Luckily for her, there is an unlit candle on the wall, just at the bottom of the staircase. Only a few more steps to go….

Twilight cautiously takes the steps down, one at a time, while carefully shining the flickering light on the steps below her. Her descent down the stairs came to an end, as she plants her hooves at the bottom of the staircase.

She now makes her way over to the candle hanging on the wall. Luckily, this one was enchanted by Twilight herself to give light to the entire room.

“I probably should have brought one of those down here with me…” Bringing her horn close to the candle, a spark leaps from her horn and onto the wick. A flame flickers to life and illuminates the entirety of the room. “Good thing at least that works,” she mutters to herself.

“Much better. That flickering was starting to give me a headache,” Twilight adds as she steps into the center of the room. She looks around the room, carefully scanning the various types of machinery. “Now, where could that machine be?”

Her gaze meets various items all over the room as she looks for the correct machine, giving verbal confirmations for each one. “That’s not it. Neither is that one. Or that one. No. No. No….”

She looks over machines of various shape and size, but she never seems to find the correct one. There was the one she had used to try and get information on the Pinkie Sense. And then there was one she used to measure spell power.

“Oh? What’s this?” Twilight walks over to a chemistry work table where she had found a strange burn mark. “Where did this come from?” she asks herself, before finally coming to a realization. “Oh, right. The chemical explosion last week … I told Pinkie to stay out of the chemicals cabinet….”

Conveniently beside the table, there was the machine that she has been looking for all along. “Aha! There you are. Let’s get this thing going, shall we?”

A tall machine stands in front of the purple pony. The gray metal is adorned by several lights, gauges, and graphs that only somepony like Twilight would be able to make sense of. With a feeling of confidence, she takes down a helmet hanging from the side of the machine, and straps it onto her head.

“I’m ready for this.” Twilight raises a hoof, and slowly brings it down towards a big green button on the machine. She presses it down…

Yet nothing happens. It takes a few seconds until the studious pony realizes that nothing has happened. She presses the button again. Nothing.

“Come on, work!” she growls at the machinery, before another hopeless button press, yielding no result. She presses the button again. And again. And again, until her hoof is furiously tapping the accursed button. With each press, she hopes that one of them will miraculously bring the machine to life. And as expected, still nothing happens.

Growling in frustration, she takes off the helmet and mounts it onto the machine again. A brief check from the lavender pony along all sides of the machine confirms that everything should be working fine. That is, except for one vital part.

The power switch is turned off.

Twilight gives the offending switch a blank stare for several seconds, before connecting her hoof to her face. Sighing in frustration, she flips the switch to the on position. She sets the helmet on her head once again, and presses the button one final time.

And this time, the machine hums and whirrs into action. The lights flash green and red, and the arrows on the gauges begin to find their locations on the meter. Twilight sighs in relief, and waits for the results from the machine.

“I hope this can tell me what’s going on with my magic…. I don’t want a repeat of that … thing coming up.” The mere thought of the event causes her to shudder in disgust.

As the test from the machine continues, Twilight decides to use this time to curse that vile piece of parchment, using phrases such as “hellspawn”, “abomination”, and “writing errors that I hope to never again encounter”.

Of course, the memory is still fresh in her mind. As much as she tries to pry the memory from her brain, she still remembers the horrifying scene. The grammar errors … that horrendous spelling … the lack of paragraphs … it was all a living nightmare.

“No!” she defiantly cries out. “I can’t let myself get hung up about this. I have to focus on the here and now, and what I’m going to do to fix this problem! I can do this!”

As if on cue, the machine lets out several dings, while all of the lights turn green. The results were ready. “Okay … now what do we have here?”

In response, the machine prints out a single, large sheet of paper that Twilight takes into her hooves. With anticipation, she scans over the readings and results, and finds out that her magic is…

Absolutely normal.

She continues to stare at the calculated results, blinking all the while. She faints upon a double check of the results, and her world goes black….

---

“…Twilight….” she is called out to in a sing-song voice. “…Are you there?... Equestria to Twilight….”

Groaning, she groggily opens her eyes to find herself lying down on the floor, next to her results from the previous night. She looks to the left and to the right, to find everything else left as it was before. However, when she looks up….

“…Pinkie Pie?” She asks her in a dazed voice, to which she receives a wide smile.

“Well, who else could it be, silly? Are you okay? You were lying down on the floor….”

“Last night wasn’t very pleasant for me,” the purple pony begins as she stands up on all fours. “My magic is acting all strange, and I can’t find out what’s causing it... Wait. Please don’t tell me you got into the chemical cabinet again…” Hopefully, the answer would be ‘no’. The last incident caused quite a ruckus, as Twilight could remember.

“Oh no, Twilight, I was just here looking around for something, but I think I found it now!” She cheerily exclaims, bouncing to a far corner of the room.

“What did you find, Pinkie?” Surprisingly, there was no response. “Pinkie?”

The pink pony seats herself, and pulls out a book from her saddlebags. Opening the book, she begins to read in a language foreign to Twilight’s ears. This is unlike anything the studious pony had ever seen!

“Pinkie, what are you doing…?” She worriedly asks. Please don’t let it be a repeat of last week….

Her words fall on deaf ears yet again. Pinkie finishes her chanting soon after, to which a mystical rift appears in front of her. As Twilight’s jaw nearly hits the floor, Pinkie reaches into the rift with a hoof to quickly pull out a pure black obsidian orb, glowing with a red aura.

“Pinkie, what the hay is that thing?!” Twilight jumps back in fright.

“Oh, this thing? Those three silly fillies were carrying it around, trying to get their cutie marks with it, and I saw them with it, and I knew I had to destroy it, because this is a demonic artifact, so I went on a quest to destroy it, but got completely distracted and I left it here, so then I went to look for it here, and now here I am!”

Twilight could only respond with a twitching of the right eye. However, she finally realizes something very important about the evil artifact.

“Wait … this item has a very powerful aura … it might’ve been what was interfering with my magic, even more so when I got closer to it! Is that what was causing me all this trouble…?”

“Don’t worry about it now, Twilight! I’m going on my quest to destroy this thing once and for all!” Knowing Pinkie on these types of matters, Twilight knew everything would be alright.

“Good luck to you then, Pinkie. But before you go, what demon does that artifact belong to?”

“Drazniyah.”

Twilight’s eyes widen. “Drazniyah, the god of fire and destruction?!” Pinkie shakes her head.

“Drazniyah, the god of minor inconveniences.” The response awkwardly hangs in the air, before Twilight connects her hoof to her face.

“Well it certainly wasn’t minor for me…”

Pinkie says her goodbyes, before running off with the artifact on her epic quest. Upon her exit, Twilight lets out a sigh of relief.

“Now, hopefully my magic will work again…” Once again, she fetches the necessary tools. Parchment paper, a quill, and an inkwell. Time to write again.

“Hi, my name is Twilight Sparkle. I live in Ponyville, and I am Princess Celestia’s student,” she reads aloud once more, as she writes.

However, the end result is not what she is expecting…

‘hi, nmae is twilght sprkl. i live in ponyvlle, adn i prinses celestia studnt.’

Shortly after reading it, Twilight ensures that a bolt of lightning has the fate of the parchment end up the same as that of the previous two.

“What’s going on here?!” she growls furiously.

In a flash, she stomps up the stairs back to the library, in which she proceeds to pace around. “Maybe I’m just going crazy… I didn’t sleep in a while, after all…”

Twilight trots over to a table where a portable mirror lies. Taking a look at herself, the pony looking back at her is a complete mess. Ruffled mane, reddened eyes…

“Maybe I should just sleep the day off today…” groans a defeated Twilight. Upon looking closer into the mirror, she finds a shocking revelation. “Wait a second… this mirror is cursed! And I’ve been using it yesterday, too. If this isn’t the cause of my magical problems, then I don’t know what is,” She concludes. “But still, where did this mirror come from? I don’t remember having this…”

Little did she expect, her answer came in the form of raucous laughter coming from outside. With a look of confusion, Twilight made her way over to the window to see where the noise is coming from. The source of the laughter is coming from a peculiar location. It’s a showmare’s trailer.

A twitch of the right eye later, Twilight officially goes crazy. “Trixie…”

---

Unaware to her, it’s not one, but two masterminds behind the plan, having the time of their lives in their little hideout.

“Hahahahahaha!” Trixie laughs uncontrollably. “This is priceless! And it’s all thanks to that magic mirror...”

“This is hilarious,” Rainbow replies as she wipes a tear from her eye. However, it’s after her fit of laughter that she becomes more serious. “As great as that prank was, will she be okay?”

Trixie waves her concern off with a hoof. “Don’t worry, the mirror isn’t that powerful. It should wear off in a few minutes now.”

Rainbow sighs in relief. “That’s good to hear. And hey, where did you get that mirror from anyways?”

“Well, remember when I had the Alicorn Amulet and went insane? I picked it up before that, but then I thought it wouldn’t be good enough. I thought I might want to give it a try someday, though.”

On cue, three sharp knocks came at the door. “Who is it?” Trixie asks.

“Oh, Trixie~!” calls out the duo’s victim.

Trixie ponders the situation for a moment before giving her comment. “You know, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have the trailer next to her house…”

Rainbow, however, shrinks back in fright. “Oh, ponyfeathers.”

Author's Note:

Thanks for reading! I don't have much experience in writing, so constructive criticism is very much welcomed!

Comments

[Sestren]

Eh. There were a few good moments. The idea was okay and the “Stand back, foul demon! I have fire!” exchange was entertaining. What stood out most to me was the lack of flow in the writing. A number of the paragraphs were to the effect of she did X then she did Y then she did Z, next paragraph, so it came off as sort of ... halting. Lots of little abrupt starts and stops. Maybe take a look at how some other writers handle that sort of thing? For that matter, the narrative had some pacing issues as well, but being a one-off that's not really an issue to the degree it would be for a large complicated work.

[Starshine Dart]

3129283 I see. Thank you for the advice!

I'll be sure to work on it for next time.

[Jioplip]

This review is brought to you on behalf of the group Authors Helping Authors.

Name of Story: Twilight Can't Grammar.

Grammar Score: 8.

Pros:- The humour, there were some definite laugh-out-loud moments to be found.

- Your descriptions, I often find description to be either obtuse or lacking, but the only object I had trouble picturing was the admittedly vague 'machine', I found everything else described quite well.

- Characterization, I found Twilight's reactions to be believable, humourous, and well within character.

Cons:- Present tense? This is really just a nitpick, but I'm not a fan of present-tense writing.

- This mirror is cursed! Because! I really wish you elaborated on how Twilight knew the mirror was cursed. Was it a rune etched into it? Did it have an unusual magical signature? Did it, upon closer examination, fail to reflect something it should have, thereby offering Twilight a clue as to it's true nature?

- Slight grammar fulp: This '...' has a name. I don't remember what it is, but it has rules. I don't remember what they are. I reccomend looking those up on Google or somesuch, but I know for a fact that: There must be three, no more no less. And that: They must connect to the word like any other punctuation mark, 'Yes...' instead of 'Yes ...'

Notes Section: Well, that's my opinion anyhow.

I enjoyed it, overall. A good read in my books.

I would reccomend switching to past-tense narration, but that's just my personal bias talking.

I also reccomend giving Twilight a paragraph of deduction, so as to let the reader in on how she knew the mirror was cursed.

This is Type Cast, signing off.

[Starshine Dart]

3131028 Thanks for your review! Glad to know you enjoyed it. Let me know if there's a fic of yours you'd like me to review.

[Jioplip]

3133389 Thanks for replying to my review, I aim to help.

As for what I'd like a review on, it's my most popular story, A Secret Thrice Unconnected, it hasn't gotten a lot of real constructive criticism as of yet.

A way!

[Autismo555]

Funny! It's like "Punk'd" meets "My Little Pony!"
And Trixie and Rainbow Dash are both Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg!